


Sustenance

by broi



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire & Related Fandoms, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Aftermath of Torture, Gen, Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Torture, Multi, No actual sex, Past Rape/Non-con, Psychological Torture, Ramsay is his own warning, Sad Ending, Threats of Violence, direwolf death, poor Rickon hes only smol
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-24
Updated: 2016-09-24
Packaged: 2018-08-16 23:29:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,269
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8121766
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/broi/pseuds/broi
Summary: It was the sixth day that Ramsay called upon his boys to bring Rickon from the dungeons. When he arrived, chained and dirty and dotted with his own filth, it took Ramsay a long while to see the Stark in him. He was all twitches, snarls, yelps, but the Starkness was there, underneath. It was in Robb Stark’s curls, in his blue eyes. The last time Ramsay had looked in eyes like that was when he’d made Sansa a woman. Well, actually, he hadn’t looked in her eyes that first time, he’d looked in Reek’s, but he’d stared into them many times since and he knew that coldness well. He liked it when Sansa looked through him as though she were dead. Either that, or the times he’d broken her enough to inspire terror in her blue eyes. Those times were painfully rare, Ramsay had to give Sansa that, and he always came exceptionally quickly then which was a shame for both of them, as their fun was always over far too fast.
  Ramsay regarded Rickon critically. “Heavens, you are terribly thin. Tell me, little Lord: since becoming our guest, have you yet eaten?”Rickon glared at Ramsay through the unkempt curls that hung across his forehead. His lips pursed together, twisting into a wolfish scowl.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [emmaliza](https://archiveofourown.org/users/emmaliza/gifts).



> \-- whose prompt this was, and a delicious one it was too.
> 
> All aboard the Trigger Train; first stop Squick Town. No actual sex going on between Rickon and Ramsay, by the way - Lord Stark is like, 12. But as we all know, Ramsay is his own warning, and whilst this won't be the worst/most triggering thing you've ever read, this fic isn't very nice all the same.
> 
> As always -- all prompts and requests welcome.

It was the third moon since Umber had brought Rickon to Winterfell. Ramsay had thought about throwing the direwolf’s head to the crows, but there was something odd that he liked about it sitting there on the great table, rotting away, its mouth twisted into a permanent scowl-macabre. Ramsay especially liked the reactions it induced in others. Some visibly recoiled; others swallowed their nausea and remained as stoic as they could muster. Some avoided looking at it altogether. Those were Ramsay’s favourites, as he always drew attention to their supposed indifference.

“Are you not impressed by my centrepiece?” he’d question. Of course, there was no correct answer. _’Yes, my lord,'_ would make Ramsay’s eyes darken and glower. _Liar,_ he’d say. _It repulses you._ If anybody was ever stupid enough to say _no, my Lord,_ well. Their head could fucking join the beast’s on the table. A lesson to others not to be so fucking insolent.

On the fourth day, the Wildling whore tried to do Ramsay over whilst rutting in his lap. He was a little disappointed he’d had to open her neck and watch her bleed out on the stone floor. For one, he knew Winterfell was largely a shit-hole since Greyjoy had run it into the ground, but it was an ancestral home and so deserved more respect than a Wildling’s dirty blood cunting up the flagstones. Secondly, he’d been looking forward to some games with her. He liked wild girls as they tended to be a little more hardy than those southern whores he’d send for when he felt need. He’d known wild girls to lose entire fingers without screaming, and they always took longer to die so he could always spend at his own pace without needing to rush.

Yes, it was a shame about the Wildling girl.

It was the sixth day that Ramsay called upon his boys to bring Rickon from the dungeons. When he arrived, chained and dirty and dotted with his own filth, it took Ramsay a long while to see the Stark in him. He was all twitches, snarls, yelps, but the Starkness was there, underneath. It was in Robb Stark’s curls, in his blue eyes. The last time Ramsay had looked in eyes like that was when he’d made Sansa a woman. Well, actually, he hadn’t looked in her eyes that first time, he’d looked in Reek’s, but he’d stared into them many times since and he knew that coldness well. He liked it when Sansa looked through him as though she were dead. Either that, or the times he’d broken her enough to inspire pure terror in her blue eyes. Those times were painfully rare, Ramsay had to give Sansa that, and he always came exceptionally quickly then which was a shame for both of them, as their fun was always over far too fast.

Ramsay regarded Rickon critically. “Heavens, you are terribly thin. Tell me, little Lord: since becoming our guest, have you yet eaten?”

Rickon glared at Ramsay through the unkempt curls that hung across his forehead. His lips pursed together, twisting into a wolfish scowl.

“No?” Ramsay questioned. “Well, well, well, Lord Stark: that will not do. Whatever would your brother Robb say if I allowed you to waste away, here in your own halls?” He cupped a hand around his ear, leaned forward in his chair. “What was that, little Lordling? Your brother is – your brother is _dead_? And your father, and your lady mother too? You _have_ had a difficult childhood, have you not?”

Again, Rickon did not speak a word. His hand tightened into a fist at his side. 

Ramsay raised an eyebrow. “Oh, I would be angry too, little man. Those bad people who took your family away – who opened your mother’s throat from left to right, who gutted your poor brother like a skinned hare – I would seek them out, make them pay. Is that what you want, Lord Stark?”

Rickon’s wild eyes darted from Ramsay to each of his boys in turn, lounging in chairs or standing guard; to Smalljon Umber who sat cloaked in the shadows sharpening his blade, only his eyes and his steel visible; to the faceless armoured men who could have carried the sigil of any traitorous house. Rickon settled his gaze back on Ramsay and nodded, slowly. 

“Damon, free the little Lord from those filthy chains. He’s our guest in Winterfell. Chains are no way to treat a guest.” Ramsay took an apple in his hand and began to peel its skin with his knife. It fell away in a pile on the table, so thin and perfect it was almost translucent, as Rickon’s chains fell too, a single clang that echoed around the room. After a pause, Ramsay pointed with his knife to the chair the other side of the table. “Sit.”

Rickon sat. He drew his knees up to his chest so the soles of his grubby feet rested just beneath his buttocks, perched in the chair like a stone gargoyle. His great, staring eyes peered out from beneath his curls as his chin came to rest on his bony knees. Were he to wrap his arms around his legs he would have become a tight little ball of a boy, but instead his hands clasped the armrests tightly, as though poised like a coiled snake, ready to strike.

“Really, Lord Stark, you must eat something,” said Ramsay with his mouth full. He tossed his apple core to the floor and reached forward for a steaming bowl of stew. Rickon’s eyes followed Ramsay’s hand as it closed around the handle of a spoon, scooped a ladle-full of stew from the bowl, and raised it to his mouth. “I can see in your eyes how hungry you are. This…this _protest_ of yours really is getting a little silly now, don’t you think?” Ramsay spooned the stew into his mouth. Rickon’s eyes focused on a tiny dribble of stew lingering on Ramsay’s chin. “ _Delicious._ However will you have the strength to avenge your family’s deaths if you do not eat?”

Rickon’s eyes snapped up to meet Ramsay’s. There was a new emotion there, alongside the wild rage and reckless, burning hatred. There was _interest_.

Ramsay leaned over and pushed a bowl of stew in Rickon’s direction. “It’s not poisonous,” he said. “Well, not any more than usual, given what the cook usually offers up.” Rickon’s spoon, clutched in his dirty fist, stopped halfway towards his mouth. Ramsay looked at him. “It’s a _joke_.”

Eyes narrowed, Rickon did not move. Ramsay rolled his eyes, made a gesture with his hand to encourage Rickon on. Slowly, Rickon took a mouthful of stew. 

“See? Delicious.”

Rickon scooped another mouthful, this time devouring it quicker. And then another, and another, and then the spoon was discarded in favour of lifting the bowl to his lips and slurping hungrily, consuming it with the ravenous appetite of one starved for weeks. Ramsay smiled, his white teeth glittering in the candlelight. 

“There, now. It wasn’t so difficult, was it? You will have your strength back in no time, little man. You shall fight with the vigour of ten warriors, in the name of House Stark. Your brother Robb would be so proud. Tell me, little Lord. What would you do to the men who killed your mother? The monsters who took your brother’s head and paraded it on a spike?”

Rickon stared at Ramsay over the top of his bowl. 

“Would you kill them?”

A slow nod.

“Bring Lord Stark more stew. Heaven knows he needs his strength.” Ramsay placed his spoon carefully in his empty bowl. His pale fingers closed around the handle of his knife. “That one,” he said, pointing the blade towards one of the armoured men standing behind where Rickon sat, “held the crossbow which skewered Robb Stark’s heart. Did you know that, little lordling?”

Rickon did not move.

“And that one there--” Ramsay pointed the blade to his right, “well. It may of course be a wicked and scandalous rumour – because this would truly be a foul, disgusting act – but some surmise your good lady mother did not go into the next life, er…shall we say, with her honour intact?” 

The bowl landed on the table with a loud wooden slap. It clattered for a second before stilling. Rickon’s thin fingers gripped the edge of the table so hard they turned white.

“Shameful,” Ramsay was saying, shaking his head. “My father’s bannermen, of course, not mine. My father was a cold-hearted, ruthless man. It is no wonder his enemies caught up with him in the end.” With a flick of his wrist, Ramsay embedded the knife with a shuddering thud in the table, within a stretch of Rickon’s hands. “Not like me, Lord Stark. The new Lord Bolton believes in justice for those who have been wronged. Would you like justice, Rickon? It is yours to take, should you want it. This is my gift to you, little Lord.” Ramsay inclined his chin towards Damon and Alyn, nodding at the guard standing to Rickon’s right. In the small slit afforded in his helmet through which to see, the guard’s eyes widened in terror. 

“Lord Bolton – please – I didn’t – I’d _never_ ….”

“Boys, take his helm from him,” said Ramsay. “Lord Stark will look upon the face of that who murdered his brother.”

Damon clasped the guard’s arms as Alyn wrenched the helmet from his head. The guard dropped to his knees. “Lord Stark – I beg of you, please – I wasn’t even at the Red Wedding – I was at the Dreadfort, standing guard for Lord Bolton in his absence—”

“Standing guard for _who_?” snarled Ramsay, immediately on his feet. “You fucking cunt, there is only one Lord Bolton of which you may speak and he is standing in front of you. You dare disrespect me in my own fucking halls? You will get off your fucking knees and apologise to Lord Stark for murdering his family.”

“Please, your Lordship, I--”

“If you beg one more time, you will wish you hadn’t. Now, do as you are instructed and pay your respects to Lord Stark. It’s not fucking difficult. Say, _I am sorry, Lord Stark, for murdering your family._ ”

The guard choked out a sob. “I – I am sorry, Lord Stark, for murdering your family.”

Ramsay nodded. “Better. Now come and lay your hands on the table where Lord Stark can see them. That’s it. _Surrender_ to your little Lord. Look him in the eye as you speak to him.”

Damon twisted the guard’s arm behind his back, pushing him forward, eliciting a pained yelp. Ramsay rolled his eyes. _Fucking spineless. Definitely one of his father’s men._ The guard lay his hands upon the table next to where Rickon’s hadn’t moved, still clasping the wood, still white.

“Now, what do you say?” said Ramsay.

“I – I am sorry, Lord Stark, for murdering your family.”

“ _Look at him, you craven-cunted whore.”_

The guard’s terrified eyes met Rickon’s. “I am sorry, Lord Stark, for—" 

“—For fucking your dead mother’s corpse.” 

The guard shook his head wildly. “No! Lord Bolton, forgive me – Lord Stark, I never—” 

Ramsay leaned over, both his hands on the table. He regarded the guard quizzically, eyebrows raised. “I’m not sure you understand what is happening here,” he said. “One way or another, this is not going to end well for you. Lord Stark here is an angry boy, granted, though I don’t think he has enough in him yet to kill a man. Injure, certainly. Probably very painfully. But not kill. To me, on the other hand, killing comes as easily as fucking your slut mother’s mouth. Except, much like fucking your slut mother’s mouth, I like to take my time about it. It never fails to amaze me how long a woman can go without breathing when they’ve got a cock in their throat and my fingers pinching their nostrils shut. Sometimes they even pass out. I wonder how long you’ll last after Lord Stark has taken his revenge for his family, and I have taken mine, after you just _said fucking ‘no’ to your Lord_? You’d better pray to whatever whore gods you take that I get bored of you quickly and finish you off sooner rather than later. Now, do as you have been commanded and _apologise to Lord Stark_." 

“I—” 

Rickon’s wild, staring eyes fell to the hilt of Ramsay’s knife, protruding upwards from the wood, still wavering slightly from when it had been thrown. 

“I am sorry, Lord Stark, for – for fucking your mother’s corpse—” 

In a movement so swift and sure that it could have been a direwolf itself, Rickon lunged for the knife and buried it to its handle through the guard’s hand and into the wood on the underside of his palm. The guard screamed, a long and terrible sound, as Ramsay’s laughter rang out above it and around the room. Damon smirked, folding his arms. “Well met, Lord Stark,” he muttered approvingly. 

“Indeed, well met, Lord Stark!” cried Ramsay in delight. The guard’s scream had fallen to a low, pitiful groan. He fell awkwardly to his knees, the knife still embedded in the table through his blood-soaked hand. “Alyn, dispose of this mewling fucking mess, at once. I’ve had second thoughts about playing with him. He’s not worth my time. Take him outside, string him up, and slice him from his cock to his jaw. He doesn’t even deserve a flaying.” Alyn hauled the guard to his feet, who was paling now as his life escaped him through the hole in his hand. As Alyn took hold of him under his arms, his hand ripped from the knife’s grip, leaving a bloodied smear and torn flesh behind. Ramsay spread his arms wide. “Anybody else desire to keep my father’s court? To even speak his fucking _name?_ No?” 

Some present looked shiftily at each other; some glanced at Rickon, whose feral expression was trained unwaveringly at the bloody gouge in the table in front of him. The knife still protruded from it. 

“Good. Then get the little Lord another bowl of stew. He has just stabbed a man. After a stabbing, all men know that one has need of stew. Sustenance, if you will." 

Rickon began to eat regularly then, although he still never spoke a word. They didn’t keep him in chains any more, instead allowing him to roam as he liked around Winterfell’s grounds – within reason, of course, and always with an escort. Most days it was Damon or Alyn, or sometimes Yellow Dick. Rickon did not like Yellow Dick; there was something about the way he licked his teeth. Something about the whites of his eyes. Rickon knew what to look for in men to know their intent. He knew what to smell on them, too. Shaggydog had taught him these things at night, when they were on the road with Osha, and then when they had been at that place with the strange men who spoke a foreign tongue and who ate each other when the winter came. Shaggydog had shown him how to know danger before it happened. 

Rickon never knew if he’d been asleep when Shaggydog had shown him these things, or if he’d been awake. Sometimes he felt as though he was staring out of Shaggydog’s eyes. Sometimes he felt as though he ran alongside him. But always, he could smell and hear and taste everything in the world, whether asleep or awake, and Rickon knew this would keep him safe. It would keep him safe even now, when he closed his eyes at night and waited for Shaggydog to come and run with him through the Godswood, and he never came. Rickon wondered, _what had he done wrong to make Shaggydog go away?_ He was not stupid; he had seen the direwolf’s head on Umber’s spike. He didn’t expect to see him during the day. He was dead. 

But that shouldn’t stop him coming at night. It never had before. 

“Now that you are eating, you are growing into a fine, strong young Lord,” Ramsay was saying at dinner. He gestured to Rickon’s hands, cupped around his bowl as he lifted it to his mouth. “Of course, we may need to work on your table manners, but what is the point of being a Lord if one cannot do precisely as one wishes?” 

Rickon set his bowl on the table and wiped his mouth with the back of his sleeve. 

“A second helping, Lord Stark? Fetch the little Lord more of that delicious stew.” Ramsay was fiddling with his knife again, turning it over between his fingers and his knuckles, admiring the balance. “This was my father’s knife, you know,” he said at length. He clasped the handle in his palm, waved the blade in Rickon’s direction. “I should have loved to stab him in the gut with it, but sadly, his enemies got there first. Poison: a woman’s weapon, don’t you think, Lord Stark? You’re cut from the same cloth as me. Northerners. We do things properly here, not like those weaklings in the south. When they brought your sister to marry me, I could smell the south on her a mile off. The imp had fucked the North out of her, I don’t doubt.” 

Rickon stared hard at Ramsay. 

“Oh – you didn’t know? Forgive me, Lord Stark, for my oversight. You see, it’s all a little complicated, but I shall try to explain it as best I can. Now, your sister, Sansa Stark, became Sansa Lannister – for all of five minutes, of course, but that’s all that was needed for the Imp to make his mark – and then, trusted unto me by a very dear friend of our house, became Lady Sansa Bolton. Now, I was assured her maidenhead was intact, and believe me, Lord Stark, I wanted to believe it for your sister’s honour. How I wanted to believe! I did not want to bed her – I wanted to protect what little honour she had left – but, as is tradition (and we know what a stickler my father was for tradition), I was forced to, er – do my part in ensuring the continuation of my family’s blood.” 

“The little Lord looks unwell,” smirked Damon. “Perhaps a little too much stew.” 

“Do you remember Theon Greyjoy, little man?” said Ramsay. 

Rickon nodded. His jaw twitched. Ramsay could tell that within his thin, sallow face, Rickon clenched his teeth. 

“I’m sure there are things you’d like to do to Theon Greyjoy worse than burying a knife in his hand. But, I have some excellent news for you!” Ramsay clapped his hands together in delight. “I have already taken it upon myself to see that Theon Greyjoy is punished for the crimes he committed against your family, Lord Stark. It cannot be argued that I am not a generous bannerman, can it not? You see, first I took something away from Lord Greyjoy that was very precious to him. Do you know why I did that, little Lordling?” 

A shake of the head. 

“I did that because he took something from you. He took Winterfell from you and your brother, Bran. You remember that dark room where you slept those first nights they brought you here, before I explained that you were our guest? I tortured Theon Greyjoy in that room, Lord Stark. I took parts from his body and his mind until he could not tell me his own name, just the name I allowed him to own. The knife you used was the knife I used too. Isn’t that a wonderful thought?” 

Rickon’s eyes fell to the knife again, held loosely in Ramsay’s short, pale fingers. 

“I broke him, Lord Stark. I destroyed everything about him that made him a man. I said to him, _you will pay for what you did to Bran and Rickon. You’re not fit to even speak the name Stark._ So it was only natural that he was there when I bedded your sister. She’d become a traitorous southern whore for what it was worth, so I made Theon watch as I raped her. I can assure you, little Lord, that there was no greater punishment for him than knowing he could never save her, nor save any of you, nor make any of his mistakes correct again. Poor Theon Greyjoy. Poor Sansa Stark.” 

Rickon’s chair fell backwards with a scrape and a thud. His clawed, long fingernails grazed Ramsay’s hand as he snatched for the knife, but Ramsay had been too quick. Damon and Alyn were at Rickon’s back, pinning his thin little arms to his sides, as he snarled and hissed and wriggled like a demon. Ramsay rounded the table in a flash and pressed the knife to Rickon’s throat. 

“Listen to me, you ungrateful little cunt. I _punished_ Theon Greyjoy for you. I married your whore sister before I fucked her; is that not honourable? I bring you home to Winterfell, give you run of the grounds, feed you my very best food, and this is how you repay me?” Ramsay turned the knife slowly in Rickon’s neck to show his hand, where Rickon’s graze had drawn blood. “I think that perhaps we had better start again, little Lordling. Snarling and growling is not how we show our Lord respect. Be a good little man and do as you’re told. Say, _yes, my Lord._ ” 

Rickon spat in Ramsay’s face. 

Without removing the knife from Rickon’s neck, Ramsay grabbed Rickon’s cheeks with his other hand and squeezed, hard. “That _was_ a silly decision, little man. Do you like stories?” Ramsay twisted his hand, making Rickon’s head nod. Rickon choked out a furious snarl. “Wonderful! It so happens that I have a story for you that I just know you will enjoy.” He leaned in close, his lips next to Rickon’s ear. He was struggling, but Damon and Alyn had him held fast. Ramsay whispered, “Once upon a time, there was a little boy who thought he was a wolf. At night in his sleep, he tossed and turned and howled and shrieked, because in his dreams, he could not find his wolf friend to play with. He was kept under guard, you see, because he was a wild and feral creature with no sensibility at all. Does this story sound familiar?” 

Ramsay pulled at Rickon’s face again, nodding _yes._

“Oh, the things the little boy would moan in the night, my Lord Stark! He would whimper and cry and say, _Shaggydog!_ A stupid fucking name for an animal if you ask me, but I’m not the one who made this story up. Anyway, all night the boy would cry, and each morning he would wake up in a cold sweat and it would always take him a few moments to work out where he was – in bed, a million miles away from the wolf in the dream. 

“Except – except! He wasn’t so very far away from the wolf within, at all!” Ramsay released Rickon’s face, clapped his hands together in delight. “In fact, he was closer than he could have ever dreamed! Can’t you see that this story has such a happy ending, Rickon?” Ramsay clasped Rickon’s shoulders, beaming at him. He leaned in again, his breath hot on Rickon’s ear. Ramsay licked his lips at the sensation of the Stark boy shuddering beneath him. “You ate all your stew, didn’t you, Rickon? Became so big and strong? It’s so difficult to get good meat these days that, well…the direwolf was only missing its head, and it would have been such a dreadful waste to just burn it or throw it to the crows. After all, Lord Stark, _winter is coming._ ” 

Rickon screamed then: a hoarse, bawling howl that for some reason Ramsay couldn’t quite discern, went straight to his cock. Strange. _Oh well,_ he thought, _that could be investigated later._

“Take him back to the dungeons and chain him up,” said Ramsay. He regarded Rickon distastefully, taking in his hanging head and knotted curls, which bobbed silently with his muffled sobs. “He’s a sore disappointment, if I’m honest. I may see if he is more amusing tomorrow, when I take a finger or some other thing. His bastard brother marches this way with his Wildling army, if my rangers are to be believed. He could prove himself to be a very entertaining tool in some new games yet.” Ramsay placed his knife under Rickon’s chin, tilting his jaw upwards to look him in the eye. It pleased Ramsay to note that his eyes were red and swollen already from crying. For all the ferocious, untamed wildness in him, he was at the end of it all, a boy. 

“Don’t feed him for six days,” Ramsay said, his cold eyes boring into Rickon’s. “When he’s given his direwolf's stew again, I want him begging for it." 

As Damon and Alyn took Rickon down, Ramsay sat at his table and surveyed the food before him. He picked at a stringy bit of meat in his teeth with the end of his blade. “I think I have a taste for some lemon cakes,” he said. “Lady Bolton’s favourites. I haven’t had them in so many moons, and I should like to, I think.” He spread his towelled cloth across his lap so as not to make a mess of his breeches, for that would be a dreadfully uncouth thing for the Lord of Winterfell and Warden of the North to do. 


End file.
